ive had penalty fare before not issued from the court from the railway enforcement officers , this is my first mg 11 but i did plead guilty in a written letter and offer them twice single fare plus 120 on of the 125 court payment

You can read the sentencing guidelines for the offence involved here. New guidelines will apply if your trial is after 24 April (here).

Breaking the Regulations of the Railways Act ("Fare Evasion") only results in jail if there are significant factors worsening it - principally previous convictions, violence/threats or other bad behaviour during the process, or an extremely high amount of money saved. Furthermore, a guilty plea at this stage will reduce your sentence so even if these mitigating factors DO push you up into a jail sentence, this plea would almost definitely bring you back down.

As a jail sentence is technically possible on the day, you should be able to get advice from the duty solicitor at the court if you have not already got a solicitor. He/she will be able to help you with any mitigation that you think might reduce the sentence.

The OP has been caught before and issued a penalty fare, possibly more than once. This time it has gone to court, either because he had no money or because his name flagged up as a repeat offender, or both. This time he may only get a fine. If he continues to attempt to pay only when challenged then a subsequent court appearance may well result in jail.

To the OP:
You are well and truly known to Southeastern now. It is extremely unlikely that any future travel without a ticket will result in a penalty fare, even if you do have the money on you to pay. It is only going to get more serious from now on. The message you need to take from this is to always buy a ticket before you board the train (unless there are absolutely no facilities to do so).

If you were a cat then I'd say you've probably used up 6-7 of your lives, where the 9th one ends up in jail.

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suffering from mental health could that let me off little plus i'm known to the train company being section 136 under mental health act at there station

It depends on your diagnosis - it is unlikely to get you off unless (for example) you were actively experiencing a psychotic episode at the time, but it may persuade a judge to reduce the sentence.

Before the court date, you should seek a letter from your doctor describing your symptoms (do they include forgetfulness, for example?). The court duty solicitor may use this to help mitigate any punishment (reduced fine, conditional discharge, etc).

If you have the money, speaking to a solicitor in advance may be good as they'll be able to help you formulate an argument around this. However, remember that any fine is likely to be between 50%-150% of a week's income. So if a solicitor costs more than this, you may be best to rely on the court duty solicitor.

If your symptoms include anxiety or other things that would make a court appearance difficult, you may want to speak to the citizens advice bureau or the court itself about any help you might be entitled to.

The OP has been caught before and issued a penalty fare, possibly more than once. This time it has gone to court, either because he had no money or because his name flagged up as a repeat offender, or both. This time he may only get a fine. If he continues to attempt to pay only when challenged then a subsequent court appearance may well result in jail.

based on what sentencing guidelines for which offence? is there any precedent for imprisoning people for this?

based on what sentencing guidelines for which offence? is there any precedent for imprisoning people for this?

The sentencing guidelines do include a prison sentence for Regulation of the Railways. However, they don't include it in any of the suggested 'ragnes' for an offence, meaning that it's effectively there as an option for exceptional circumstances.

In practice, therefore, it is highly unlikely that someone would be sentenced for this and no-one here has ever mentioned a case on here where this has happened - to find out whether it has ever happened we'd have to go hunting for it! I think for this to happen in real life, it would have to include multiple factors that increase both culpability and harm ie an organised and deliberate scheme to evade a large amount of fares over an extended time-frame, perhaps without a guilty plea as well.

What's notable is that the post-April sentencing guidelines do include a low level community order ("community work") in the range for category 1 versions of this offence (increased harm and culpability); we can speculate that this may become a more common sentence for repeat offenders in future.

based on what sentencing guidelines for which offence? is there any precedent for imprisoning people for this?

Just to expand on cuccir's answer - my suspicion is that the reason custodial sentences for RoRA prosecutions are rare is because the behaviour that would merit such a sentence also supports more serious charges and any persons would have been prosecuted under the Fraud Act or similar.

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